I finished Killer Elite last night, and am attempting Ulysses next. Which will be a tiny bit of a change, I’m sure. Joyce doesn’t interest me as much as he probably could–except for his love letters to Nora–mostly because he’s one of the Dead White Men of Litrachur. (And frankly, Nora’s vanished letters interest me much more.) All the same, reading to understand allusions other authors have made is good for one’s soul, and one should try things one suspects one will dislike regularly, in order to keep a certain flexibility.

Other than that, work continues, as usual. I was a trifle surprised yesterday when someone labeled me a “hater” for saying “you might want to think about why your mind immediately went that, good luck.” Of course, the instant one doesn’t respond the way someone else thinks one should, the labels start to fly fast and furious. I noticed this in the most recent breakup as well. Most people have a script, and if you don’t give your line, they suddenly become towering, rage-filled petty dictator-directors, throwing the pages at you and screaming “you’ll never work in this town again!”

My response to that has become strangely blasé. Mostly because I grew up in an environment with constantly changing “scripts” roiling around me and the adults in my life ready to severely punish any wrong answer. I’ve become troublingly good at unpacking the response the other person truly wants, not just what they say they want. (Like any sharp tool, it cuts both ways–but that’s say it with me, another damn blog post.) The luxury of therapy is that I’ve trained myself to stop and make a conscious decision to give what the other person wants or not, and feel much less guilty when I misread someone else’s agenda. Gone are the days when I jump simply because someone applies the electrodes of “I NEEEEED this from you!” Which is a pretty damn good feeling, actually.

That all brings me to another article I read yesterday, on what grown children might “owe” to abusive, toxic, or destructive parents. I went round and round, in therapy, over my feelings of obligation versus my need to keep my psychic, emotional, and physical integrity intact so I can care for those I have a greater obligation to–namely, my children and the one or two people who have proven themselves to be trustworthy friends. In the end, the guilt is less than the damage that would be done if I ever re-engaged with any number of toxic people. I suppose getting older means weighing two evils in just such a manner, and choosing the less cumulatively calamitous one.

Outside, the hyacinths and crocuses have lifted their little green heads. Daffodils have begun showing signs of tiptoeing forth as well. It’s a bit early, but after our last deep freeze winter’s been very mild, all things considered. It might turn out to be a good year for the garden.

Of course, getting older also means you look at a sentence like that and constantly think, well, it’s too soon to tell.

I finished reading The King of Elfland’s Daughter yesterday–Sunday being the day I’m most likely to have a chunk of time for concentrated reading. Dunsany’s been compared to Tolkien, and as far as I can see, neither of them cared to give women much agency or independent being as characters, which bothered me slightly when I read, near the end of the book, about Lirazel’s mother. She’s treated to a whole almost-paragraph or two; it was a little bitter-making because I’d been wondering where the Queen of Elfland was in all this, for pages and pages.

What I did like very much about the book was the descriptive flow, the craft, the sense that I was reading something translated from an older language. I can see where other authors paid tribute to Dunsany, and I like following those paths, reading things other people found joy and fuel in.

Change of subject: I am now very glad I didn’t do a Kickstarter for the projected second Steelflower book. Why? Because of this. Basically, another author got harassed and doxxed because she dared to be honest about where a significant portion of the raised funds would go–towards groceries and rent while she took the time to write the book her fans said they wanted, a book the trad publisher wasn’t interested in. A book she would be taking a significant pay cut to write. The entitlement of the assholes who harassed and doxxed her is breathtaking–what the fuck do they think writers live on while writing those books they love to consume, ‘ship, and torrent? Everyone’s got rent, and everyone’s gotta eat, and this persistent idea that “all writers are rich” or “artists shouldn’t care about money” does so much harm and strangles so many cool things before they can be born.

*sigh* I thought about it deeply and did a lot of number-crunching. It wouldn’t have made economic sense for me to do another Steelflower book without raising at least $15K, and afterward, the hit I’d take from torrenting and piracy would mean that I’d barely break even on the project. Sad, but true.

This is part of the cost of piracy, and part of the cost of closing our eyes to the ease with which people can harass on the internet. If it wasn’t socially acceptable to steal digital goods, or to harass women on the internet–if there was, say, a social cost to doing those things, instead of the “payment” thieves and harassers get by banding together and patting each other on the back–who knows what fantastic new creations we could all be enjoying right now?

Anyway. I’m in a mood where I do not suffer impoliteness with any grace today, as you can probably tell. Time for me to sign off, get the dogs settled for the morning, and get to work on Trinity’s story.

Due to the kids being in school and the shortness of winter days, I get sunlight through the office window after I’ve already been writing for a little bit–that is, if it isn’t cloudy. Those mornings are particularly golden. There’s a quality to winter light that makes writing a little easier, in some ways.

The weekend was spent in an orgy of housecleaning (frankly the only manner of orgy I have any patience for nowadays) and errand-running, since I’ve been scrambling to catch up with a bunch of stuff and have let both slip. The furious activity means that things are relatively clean and the Yule tree is up–the kids put the ornaments not his year, without me even needing to hand the delicate ones over. Not a single fight, eyeroll, pinch, or flutter of sarcasm was had.

I have marvelous children.

The dogs are also jingling festively–Odd is freshly washed–but not because I’m tormenting them. They have new ID tags on their collars, nice ones, just in case. Both are microchipped as well, but belt and suspenders (plus a third means of pants-holding) are always good. The old tags were getting a bit difficult to read.

Today I mail off proof pages, make a list of stuff to do next, record some pronunciations for an audiobook, squeeze a short run in between everything, maybe even get my hair trimmed. It irks me to trim it when it’s still so short, but I do want it to grow in nicely, and since C is in remission (oh, heavens, thank you) I can let it. I have AMAZING bedhead, even though I have nowhere to stick spare pencils when I’m proofing. This means I don’t go to bed with pencils and pens festooning my head–a bright lining to every dark cloud, I guess?

Piano practice proceeds apace. I’m working through a Junior Hanon book–the regular Hanon was too frustrating for my skill level, and the Princess talked me into using the Junior one like she does. She’s discovered she likes playing ragtime best, her teacher is surprised and pleased. I’m still chugging away at a Bach polonaise, and have finished my review of the first lesson-book, which means I’m back in the second lesson-book and plonking ahead with grim determination. There are things I want to get good enough to play, but that won’t happen without a lot of consistent practice. I suppose it keeps me out of trouble.

And, incidentally, out of video games. I got bored with the latest WoW extension–not precisely bored, I guess, but when you’re in-garrison trade chat is on, and it’s wearying to have that unmoderated sewer sitting on your screen while you’re trying to upgrade your barn, for God’s sake. So I deleted the whole thing off my hard drive and have turned off any subscription. I just don’t have the patience for some aspects of multiplayer anymore, though I loved the idea of customizing one’s own garrison and fighting off invasions, and I like the auction functions. I did try Guild Wars, but since I can’t window it and it takes forever to get anything crafted, I lost interest.

I’m hoping this is just a phase, because I do like gaming, but all the stuff that comes with multiplayer is just too toxic, and the dopamine hits just aren’t enough to justify the time sink, the expenditure, or the putting up with trade chat. It’s like all Barrens all the time, with a healthy dose of GG dudebro, and none of that is appealing. It makes me wonder how much money game companies are missing out on by not moderating chat a little more. Of course, given how awful chat is and how much they’d have to pay someone to mod it, they probably break even.

So instead of gaming, it’s practicing piano and reading. I’m working my way through stuff in my collection I don’t remember reading, and planning on making a dent in the towering TBR pile. It might end up giving my brain more to chew on in the long run, but I miss rep grinding or dungeon clearing with a good group.

I dreamed I got a job at a drugstore attached to a mall. A friend and I were hired at the same time, and our first few days went smoothly…until the manager had a day off and the assistant manager, a petty tyrant, took over. He was so nasty-tempered and insistent that my friend and I not speak to each other I outright quit that day and walked out, but had to stay in the area because I was my friend’s ride home. Which led to me wandering through crowds at a mall, never my favourite thing. I walked behind a group of kids–I think, in the dream, I was barely sixteen myself–and one of them bitched so loudly I said, “Oh, look, it’s Cher,” and they didn’t get it.

As I wandered, gradually recognizing that I was lost and couldn’t find the store to pick my friend up as the time to drive her home approached, I realized there were two groups of people using the crowd as cover–a team of shoplifting assassins and another team responsible for catching them. (Exactly how I knew the shoplifters were assassins is a mystery.) I got a text from someone I didn’t know, and was trying to text back that it was a wrong number, when my phone turned into a dishrag. So I put it back in my pocket, and I was having a type of fun positioning myself to watch the two teams without them seeing me when I suddenly thought, it’s time to pick her up, all you have to do is go outside and follow the building around and you’ll find her and the car.

Which led to me waking up, with a cold, sweat-gush feeling of relief that I’d figured something out. I felt a little guilty for leaving the friend working there when I had decided to quit, but relieved that I could just walk away from a bad situation and wasn’t trapped, trying to make it better.

My brain, honestly. Now I’m absorbing my morning coffee and wondering if a team of shoplifting assassins is a story idea or just one of those weird misfires the dreaming mind is prone to. Probably the latter, because why would assassins shoplift?

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